Apostasy
by Lasgalendil
Summary: Chaos as Freedom. The Former United States is under the protectorate of Wayne Enterprises, but has this company and this nation gone too far for the Greater Good? Jack Napier thinks so-and he's about to break faith to become the hero Gotham needs. AU.


**AN: A oneshot teaser/trailer response to a Why So Serious forum post: When Chaos Equals Freedom. Hopefully someone will write something more substantial about it, but until then, enjoy! Like always, shades of Alan Moore's Watchmen-I'm like Jack Sparrow, I just couldn't resist.**

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Dead body laid in gutter. Tank tread over burst stomach. Blood like shit everywhere. Hell of a mess. Family members rush from the safety of their homes, beaten back by Enforcers and the Night Watch. They are crying. Screaming. Rushing for their loved one-

But they are beaten back. Thwack of rifle butt on bone. But crazed with sorrow and anger the people press on.

They are brave. Or stupid. I wager stupid. I've lived here long enough to know there is no courage left in the hearts of men. We are weak. Cowards. So easily preyed upon…

The Guards panic. Shots are fired. More innocents fall. Better to kill them quickly than risk the Batman showing up. The Batman is brutal. He has no mercy. The Batman is the only thing that strikes fear into the hearts of the Enforcers. But they are fools. The Batman is only a man-perhaps many men-whose only task is Enforcing _them._

The street is still. No one moves. I was right.

Rifles are lowered, and doors are banged on and those left inside rounded up and arrested. They are guilty of housing convicted enemies of the state. They will submit to searches and questioning. They will be tried. Condemned. Imprisoned.

The Night Watch radios it all in, and in the morning these state-sponsored killers will be heroes, responding with due force to the violence that plagues our City. The terrorists who sponsored this vicious attack on our City's Soldiers will be brought to justice. Wayne Enterprises will chime it is 'only another regrettable yet necessary slaughter for the sake of the Greater Good.'

I am sick. Yet I cannot turn away.

I am tired of this City. Tired of her fear. Tired of her lies. Tired of being hunted in broad daylight by men in black suits upholding the law, and hunted at night by men in masks who simply ignore it.

I am tired of the law being re-written by those who gain its profit. Tired of the law overstepping its bounds. They listen at our doorsteps. They monitor our purchases. Programming. Control the press. They read our emails and our children's minds. They are everywhere. In Schools. Networks. Communications. There is no safe haven.

Yet they say they make us safe. They say they keep us free.

I watch from the shadows as they hose the street, blood and water glugging to the sewers below. Is this the price of peace? Of freedom? Is a peace bought by the blood of innocents every really peace?

I argue it is something foul. Something far more sinister. And artificial utopia built on blood and lies. Upheld by greed. Ruled by fear.

Wayne Enterprises. Heroes. Saviors. Community Service, grants, scholarships…the rest of this country buckles under civil war, unrest and poverty but we have a bastion of wealth on our side. _Gotham City_, the voice of Wayne says every morning, _you have nothing to fear._

Paramilitary vehicles trundle by in the darkness as I flit from alleyway to alleyway. Beaters. Enforcers. The strong arm of the law: WE. Their Kevlar and camouflage tell the civilians and citizens cowering in their homes that there is nothing to fear from dusk til dawn…

…provided they stay in their homes. But these are the dank alleyways scrawled with graffiti and grit, the cesspools and cigarette butts, the broken beer bottles of a by gone era where a man lived and died-most likely died-by freedom, but at least he had a fucking choice in the matter.

…At least he had free will.

This is the alley-the very alley that started it all, where Thomas and Martha Wayne were gunned down for nothing more than a wallet stuffed with theater tickets and a string of pearls.

_Who Watches the Watchmen._ It's bright red and dripping. Clumsily scrawled. More than a decade old. Peeling and fading, paint chips flecked and fallen liked scabbed, dried blood.

Who watches the watchmen? We do. We did. Until we became too lazy and fearful, too content to let them run this City for us so afraid of urban war and the violence that has consumed this former United States…

We handed over our rights when we handed over our responsibilities. Now the Watchmen are watching _us._

I am tired of these people. Tired of their lies. Tired of violence. Tired of corruption. Tired of WE. Joe Chill you are my idol. My Hero. My Savior. You are a Saint and a Martyr. I will worship here at the hallowed ground you walked on. And if only you would have had the balls to snuff out a third life that night as well…

I open my eyes. Look to the unseen stars and sky above the haze of a million streetlamps, wonder if it too is nothing but myth and lies. Something believed in, but never substantiated...

Does no one else see? Does no one else care? Does no one else know that the crime lords that once ruled this city have not been eradicated, but simply _replaced? _The simple men who murdered overrun by a government that sponsors genocide? Am I the only one left to stand, the only one who looks into the face of a company controlling a hemisphere and sees a tyrant there instead-?

Or are these people, all these people, from the pussy President to the quaking whores all secretly pissing their pants in terror, praying and whispering _oh God, what have we done-?_

If they believe in God. If believing in God makes a damn bit of difference. Because looking around in the darkness and Hell I understand: if he exists he's either unjust and impotent, both blind and deaf

…Or perhaps he turned his back, turned his back long ago, and has forgotten us. Welcome to Jerusalem. Welcome to Hell. Welcome to Gotham City. We stone the prophets and crucify our saviors.

The wind blows. Empty cans and dry, crisped hamburger wrappers like leaves crinkling and crackling in the dark. They whip and roll lazily, tossed by whatever breeze may carry them. Lazy. Unfeeling. Complacent.

I am tired of this City. Tired of this Company. Tired of their Lies. And I am sick of these people. Sick of their fear and slavish obeisance. There is no one else. Nothing higher. No hero or Dark Knight in shining armor coming to save us…

I am tired of Military Order. Tired of Laws. Tired of a false and superficial Peace.

It's left to us. It's left…to _me._

Purple spray paint. Pssing sound. Smell of aerosol. Enough to make your eyes water. Enough to make you high.

_Why So Serious. _

I don't bother to hide my face. Hiding is for criminals. Hiding is for the weak. Somewhere there's a camera. Somewhere someone's watching. Somewhere in the emptiness above Gotham City their watchdog the Batman is racing to the scene. Sometime tomorrow it will air on television: _Batman saves city from Terrorist Threat_. So why I have their attention I give it to them: One finger. It's the only salute, the only respect they deserve.

Somewhere there's facial recognition software running to identify this face beneath the make up. Track down the criminal. And failing that, find his family and friends to brutalize them until he is bled out of the underworld forming in this city's gutters, because no man is that hard, because everyman has a breaking point, a weakness, every man has to have friends.

They are wrong. Dead men have _nothing_. And Jack Napier died tonight with those foolish innocents being wiped from the gutters to be cremated and laid in mass graves. I am no longer a man…

…I am an idea. And if they kill me another will stand in my stead. We will rise from the formless masses to become anew. An idea is faceless. Nameless. Has no fingerprints, no family and no friends. It cannot be tracked, cannot be traced, leaves no paper trail and no cyber signature. Ideas, unlike men, cannot be riddled by bullets, threatened, or coerced.

_I am Chaos,_ I tell the defaced WE banner, emblazoned with soldiers and guns, the American flag and the Company's slogan of Order. Peace. Prosperity. _And you have no power over me._

Sirens shriek. The Enforcers are coming. The Batman is coming. The full weight of Wayne Enterprises will fall upon that abandoned alleyway. They will wash. They will purge…

And tomorrow I will paint anew. I walk away through the quiet streets, swift and silent as a shadow. I slink to the sewers, to the darkness and damp that lay at the heart of this City, empty splooshes and eerie footfalls pinging echoes in the dripping silence.

I am a jester. A comedian. A _joker_. I will show this city the cost of their safety and the true horror of urban war. I will show this Company that someone knows their secret, and someone is not afraid. I will make the fearless fearful, and the senseless filled with despair. An Apostate's Apocalypse, where there are no heroes, no villains and it isn't God sitting on the final judgment seat. The people of Gotham deserve to know their Heaven is Hell and her Angels are Demons…

They deserve to know the Truth. They deserve the right to _Choose._

I am Chaos. I am Freedom. I am a dripping, Glasglow grin and a sinister smile. I am free, and in Gotham City true freedom means to be alone.


End file.
